The New Forums

[Agent Orange]

This is Erik's site and I'm a guest. I don't think he minds a little criticism in the form of suggestions, but people have no right making demands and threats. Those who visit the Vintage Computer Forum should not expect that every oddball browser and dated computers can be supported by the site. Windows 10 and Linux are here to stay. It doesn't take much to cobble up a machine that will let you browse without problems these days.

That being said, I would like to see something on the order of 'Overclock.net': https://www.overclock.net/forums/

 

[Lutiana]

The only thing I have found that I am missing is the "Mark all forums read" option, so my "New Topics" is 20 pages long. Anyone work out how to do this with the new forums?

 

[VERAULT]

You dont need windows 10 to run a new browser.. Blasphemy

 

[Agent Orange]

This is Erik's site and I'm a guest. I don't think he minds a little criticism in the form of suggestions, but people have no right making demands and threats. Those who visit the Vintage Computer Forum should not expect that every oddball browser and dated computers can be supported by the site. Windows 10 and Linux are here to stay. It doesn't take much to cobble up a machine that will let you browse without problems these days.

That being said, I would like to see something on the order of 'Overclock.net': https://www.overclock.net/forums/

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Those who visit the Vintage Computer Forum should not expect that every oddball browser and dated computers can be supported by the site.

A vintage computer forum that in fact does not support vintage computers is very contradictory. Non-HTTPS connections were supported by the old forum on purpose, and admins have repeatedly claimed on the old forum this was a feature and to not expect security here. vBulletin 5 does not require HTTPS, it was done on purpose in an about face.

Nobody claims to want every oddball browser to work, we want forced HTTPS turned off, like it had been, for years.

 

[Agent Orange]

I don't know GiG, I don't have a problem with it; i.e. Vogons, Overclock.net, Overclocker.com, and many more.

 

[kkeeley]

I've found the lack of the "Mark all forums read" option on the "New Topics" page a shame. I have noticed that there is a line of text at the bottom of the main Forums page labeled "Mark Channels Read" that appears that it may do what we are looking for, if only it was on the "New Topics" page as well.

 

[mbbrutman]

It's been fun watching this thread.

We've needed to get to a new server for a long time. Some of you remember the horrible performance problems we were having not too long ago. Our old hosting provider wasn't helping us out with those problems, so we started to work on how to move the forum.

For security reasons we needed to get to HTTPS and a newer version of vBulletin. We also wanted a server that we had more direct control over with predictable performance. A few people including a good portion of the board of directors pitched in to make the server transition. You will notice that no data has been lost. That is a huge accomplishment on a project like this. These people are not morons; they are IT professionals who work for large corporations or run their own businesses.

Regarding HTTPS: This has been a glaring problem for a long time and I'm glad we have HTTPS now. Nobody really cares if your vintage 2003 Athlon gaming rig running Windows 98 can longer access the forum directly. This forum enables people to discuss vintage computing, and we're using the most appropriate tools for the job. A telnet accessible version of this forum that emulates a BBS would be a nice, authentic experience, but most of our audience is on the web using modern browsers. While your personal security habits might be antiquated and unsafe, we're not being responsible if we continue to use just HTTP.

Regarding look and feel: Yep, the upgrade is pretty disorienting. We are working through the issues where we can.

So please, settle down and stop throwing rocks at the all volunteer staff who pay for this and make it happen. I'm more than happy to send a refund check to anybody who feels cheated.


-Mike

 

[kdr]

Nobody really cares if your vintage 2003 Athlon gaming rig running Windows 98 can longer access the forum directly. This forum enables people to discuss vintage computing, and we're using the most appropriate tools for the job. A telnet accessible version of this forum that emulates a BBS would be a nice, authentic experience, but most of our audience is on the web using modern browsers.

Firstly, a big round of thanks to the volunteers that run this forum. It's not easy staying on the treadmill that the "modern" web demands of its admins.

I think you'll find that most of the forum's audience is also trying to keep vintage computing alive, where -- for a myriad of reasons -- we don't have access to "modern" browsers on these platforms. Some of us enjoy actually using (or attempting to use) our vintage gear, sometimes even to communicate on the Internet. Is it our fault that "the Internet" now means "must implement an entire TLS stack and a dynamic language runtime with a minimum of 128MB RAM"? I can still Telnet, FTP, IRC, SMTP, and NNTP from my ancient beasts, in no small part thanks to your own wonderful work on the mTCP stack, so what's so special/revolutionary about a simple forum that makes it fundamentally incompatible with an old PC?

It's perfectly reasonable for us to have a whinge when our own forum is no longer accessible on the machines that we spend so much time keeping in working condition! Of *all* the places on the 'net this is the last place I'd expect to be having this debate!

...

Now for something constructive: is there an API available for the forum? Perhaps we *should* implement a Telnet (and NNTP) accessible version. In addition to a plain vanilla no-Javascript no-HTTPS version.

 

[mbbrutman]

KDR,

Thanks for the comments. I and the other moderators enjoy engaging thoughtful people and we are more motivated to fix things when they are brought to our attention in a reasonable way.

I would like an option to leave HTTP in place and to make HTTPS optional. (The forced redirect is probably not necessary.) Even if we do that we'll still encourage people to use HTTPS, and older computers are going to have a problem with the Javascript so it might not help anything.

If the forum software were bespoke we could do anything we wanted to, including dispensing with all of the Javascript nonsense. But we don't have that luxury - we are using something that is off-the-shelf. If I was retired I would just write my own forum software that was friendly to old machines, but clearly that takes a lot of time to do and maintain.

A telnet or simplified version of the forum for older computers is possible, but it would be a huge project.

 

[mbbrutman]

Another fix has been made ... I think. New users will be required to have 10 moderated posts again. We lost that setting in the migration which enabled the spammers to run amok for a bit.

 

[Robbbert]

I clicked on "Mark Channels Read" and it cleared everything, so that's one problem solved. Most forums let you click on the symbol to the left of the subforum (channel) name to mark just that subforum read, but that doesn't work here (it isn't clickable). Anyway I suppose the admins are working furiously to fix things one by one, as is possible, while the moderators inspect and approve the queue items.

 

[whartung]

Now for something constructive: is there an API available for the forum? Perhaps we *should* implement a Telnet (and NNTP) accessible version. In addition to a plain vanilla no-Javascript no-HTTPS version.

A Telnet option is a complete rewrite. An NNTP option a square peg/round hole thing. While there are threaded news readers, NNTP is not really set up to handle a modern, "topic and threads" style of bulletin board. NNTP has topics and...that's it. The threading is adhoc bolted on and trivially broken. Also, few NNTP readers are set up to handle the rich formatting of a modern forum.

There were NNTP gateway hacks for VB in the past, but they were to let folks turn an NNTP topic in to a VB topic, not so much to drive VB from an NNTP client.

Another possible option for readers is if the forum published an RSS feed. Then folks could subscribe to with a reader of their choosing. Can't post that way, but you could keep up.

Dunno if the forum has an RSS feed or not.

 

[TH2002]

It's been fun watching this thread.

We've needed to get to a new server for a long time. Some of you remember the horrible performance problems we were having not too long ago. Our old hosting provider wasn't helping us out with those problems, so we started to work on how to move the forum.

For security reasons we needed to get to HTTPS and a newer version of vBulletin. We also wanted a server that we had more direct control over with predictable performance. A few people including a good portion of the board of directors pitched in to make the server transition. You will notice that no data has been lost. That is a huge accomplishment on a project like this. These people are not morons; they are IT professionals who work for large corporations or run their own businesses.

Regarding HTTPS: This has been a glaring problem for a long time and I'm glad we have HTTPS now. Nobody really cares if your vintage 2003 Athlon gaming rig running Windows 98 can longer access the forum directly. This forum enables people to discuss vintage computing, and we're using the most appropriate tools for the job. A telnet accessible version of this forum that emulates a BBS would be a nice, authentic experience, but most of our audience is on the web using modern browsers. While your personal security habits might be antiquated and unsafe, we're not being responsible if we continue to use just HTTP.

Regarding look and feel: Yep, the upgrade is pretty disorienting. We are working through the issues where we can.

So please, settle down and stop throwing rocks at the all volunteer staff who pay for this and make it happen. I'm more than happy to send a refund check to anybody who feels cheated.


-Mike

Okay.

Yeah I know I lost my temper. Sorry about that.

Regarding the problems I mentioned earlier:

• The login is still completely broken for me; I cannot login on my desktop. If the desktop in question was a Windows 3.1 gaming rig that would be no big deal, but I'm talking about my XP desktop that I use on a daily basis. The browser I use (K-Meleon 76.3.1) also isn't some old browser from the 1990's or anything. In fact it's based on Firefox 52.9, the specific build of K-Meleon I use was released in 2017. Would it be possible to create a separate login page that isn't dependent on JS?
• I understand you guys are working on the appearance of the site. Hopefully everything turns out well once all is said and done.

Also heard that you're throwing around an idea that would make using HTTPS optional. That would definitely be nice to see.

 

[Timo W.]

This is a non-argument. Not having security on the forum like SSL and TLS for HTTPS was a FEATURE, not a bug. You seem to have forgotten that this is a VINTAGE computer forum, many people used their vintage computers to browse the site, which have no way of ever supporting any modern web encryption. And this doesn't even go into Javascript, which also is not supported by older computers.

You are very out of touch with reality.

And you want constructive criticism? Don't make massive changes without consulting your user base first, and bring back the old theme with FULL SCREEN support. The current theme is an eye bleeding organ pile sin against god and should have been aborted before it was even made live. And disable forced HTTPS. You may retain some of your user base that way. I for one won't tolerate the new forum and will be going elsewhere until the cancer that is now has been eliminated.

No offence, but in this case, you are out of touch with reality. First, since when is there a connection between the topic of a forum and the hardware used to access it? So according to your way of thinking, a forum about Tesla cars is only accessed by people sitting in their Teslas and using the forum on its board computer? What non-sense is this? Yes, it *would* be great if you could still access it on vintage systems, but that's not a must and never have been.

Second, SSL is a must-have these days - period! And you can also not stick with older software on a web server as long as you wish, as support for PHP versions run out and the older software may not work with newer releases of PHP. This is a big problem, let me tell you, as I'm working in this business for 15 years now. You can buy extended support for old PHP versions to keep your old software running, but that's not only expensive, but also a high risk for the web server and of course all user data stored on it.

So while I don't like the upgrade that much either, I understand that it was needed. Get used to it or leave, that is your decision. But you have no rights to tell the admins that they did anything wrong without even having the slightest inside in why they did it.

 

[Casey]

I LOATHE the new message system. Apparently nothing was lost, hence all my old mail is there, but WHERE!? I can click on a topic and kinda sorta get this "ghost" preview (so called because only a few lines fade in at a time, then when I scroll down the fade out). There's no specific Reply button, not even something like >> or <<. I finally resorted to New Post (very intuitive) and that worked. Sort of. I didn't see a distinct message in my Send Folder, but the message was apparently added to the topic thread.

The old system message interface wasn't fancy, but it worked. You saw To: & Subject:, and there was an obvious Reply key. A listing of your Inbox was just that, a list of your mail by date, newest first. Would it have been too hard to keep that?
Grrr.

 

[Casey]

Of course, everything is broken now in SeaMonkey 1.1/Firefox 2. Even the login won't run as is seems to be totally script now. Is there a normal login page hidden somewhere?

Every... single... post... has a Facebook and Twitter logo? Why are we advertising for these two companies?


It does seem like the entire world is expected to act like teenage girls these days.

First time trying the phone interface. The desktop browser interface sucks hairy rocks, but the phone interface isn't too bad. In fact the share and Twitter links are combined into a tiny little icon on the phone. Much nicer.
The interface is self-evidently designed towards smartphones and tablets vice desktop browsers.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

No offence, but in this case, you are out of touch with reality. First, since when is there a connection between the topic of a forum and the hardware used to access it? So according to your way of thinking, a forum about Tesla cars is only accessed by people sitting in their Teslas and using the forum on its board computer? What non-sense is this? Yes, it *would* be great if you could still access it on vintage systems, but that's not a must and never have been.

This is what is called a non sequitur argument. You're comparing two completely different things and then saying because A is valid, so is B, even though they have nothing to do with each other. Your argument falls flat on its face.

Second, SSL is a must-have these days - period! And you can also not stick with older software on a web server as long as you wish, as support for PHP versions run out and the older software may not work with newer releases of PHP. This is a big problem, let me tell you, as I'm working in this business for 15 years now. You can buy extended support for old PHP versions to keep your old software running, but that's not only expensive, but also a high risk for the web server and of course all user data stored on it.

Another non sequitur argument. SSL and PHP are two completely different programs that perform entirely different functions. They are in no way dependent on each other, and each can operate independently without the other. With your inherent lack of knowledge on the subject, I very much doubt your 15 years of experience.

Also, SSL is not a requirement to run a website.

So while I don't like the upgrade that much either, I understand that it was needed. Get used to it or leave, that is your decision. But you have no rights to tell the admins that they did anything wrong without even having the slightest inside in why they did it.

I guess you missed the part where I said that I've done this rodeo before? Many times I might add, over the past 20 years. I know exactly what was and was not done on the back end. You don't know me, and you certainly don't have any right to make claims about what I do or do not know.

 

[VileR]

First time trying the phone interface. The desktop browser interface sucks hairy rocks, but the phone interface isn't too bad. In fact the share and Twitter links are combined into a tiny little icon on the phone. Much nicer.
The interface is self-evidently designed towards smartphones and tablets vice desktop browsers.

Nothing really prevents having a good desktop interface along with a good mobile one. This just reflects on the incompetence of whoever designed the default vBulletin 5 theme.

Looking at the convoluted pile of redundant conflicting CSS they came up with, whoever designed that thing at vBulletin should never be allowed within 5 miles of a stylesheet editor again, but most of the visual problems are surprisingly easy to fix.

Honestly, if it took me a couple of hours to come up with a 6 KB .css override that fixes 95% of those issues on the desktop, they should've been able to do it too.

With all the negativity and complaining in this thread, I would've expected at least *some* of those who dislike the current desktop look to comment on my changes... but what do I know.

 

[compaqportableplus]

VileR, the images you posted don’t work for me; when I click on them it just brings up a tiny, low-quality thumbnail.

I will say I appreciate your efforts to help improve the look and feel though!